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How to Spot a Business Opportunity?

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The question that many people ask me is that how do I come up with some marvelous entrepreneurial idea that can change the face of this world? How do I provide a service that no one else has ever provided or a product that no one has even imagined about manufacturing yet?

Many people fall into the miserable trap of assuming that unless they have such an idea, it would only be wasted efforts to pursue any opportunity and also that someday such a brilliant idea would be revealed onto them sitting under an apple tree as in the case of Sir Isaac Newton.

If you think that’s going to happen someday, forget it. The opportunity is only available for those who are willing to practically do things and focus on act, rather than dream. I am not at all trying to imply it’s futile to dream, but to keep dreaming could be disastrous. Businesses have been established to satisfy fairly small needs and wants of select group of people such as servicing of hearing aid equipments. Businesses have also been setup of things that are fairly commonly available and consumed such as selling potato chips.

The fun part is that you need to see beyond the obvious – the latent need and establish a business to fill in the gap. As long as there is a gap – and there are innumerable gaps still – you can come up with the relevant business idea and make it a fair success. However, neither waiting for the right idea to be bestowed on you nor jumping in to start anything regardless of the demand-supply gap would work for you.

Keep looking and you’d find many possible gaps around you. You just need to see with a different perspective.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands, but in seeing with new eyes.

– Marcel Proust, French novelist

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Impact of Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is all about seeing opportunities. It’s also about creating opportunities, where everyone else just sees risks. It’s about perspective. It’s a mindset. After the credit crisis spiral, the world has seen a depression, the worst ever any working person has seen in his lifetime. It was bad. It is bad. Many analysts forecast a turnaround in this year, some skeptics seem unsure of even this suggesting that the remnants of this terrible disaster are going to haunt us for decades to come. As true as that might be, have you noticed that during these crises years, there have been many new millionaires around the world? Howcome people from the emerging markets are making their mark more and more amongst the richest people in this world?

It is about mindset. Once you start developing an ability to see the positives in and around yourself, you start noticing opportunities much faster than others do. Availing those opportunities makes you feel better about yourself and make others feel you’re better than them. What these people have difficulty coming to terms with is that it’s not about risks, it’s about calculated risks. Hence, these could be different for every person. Perhaps someone with a lot of engineering knowledge would find it easier to set up the factory floor operations, whereas someone who has only been associated with accounting might find it very risky. The same accountant could also see opportunity in what many others find risky.

The idea is to intentionally change your approach to looking at things, consciously looking out possible opportunities everywhere. After some time, you won’t have to make a conscious effort on the same and you’d look smarter.

The world out there is changing; for entrepreneurs, this is a blessing in disguise. Tomorrow belongs to those who work on them today.